The Catholic Position on Health Care Reform 3/15/2010

The Democrat proposed health care reform bill has been portrayed in every which way by leading Democrats. The rhetoric has become so twisted that most Americans are unsure what it contains. This tactic of confusing and wearing down the American people into submission is deceptive. One of the issues in the debate of health care reform is the federal funding of abortions. We hear from the Democrats that it is not in the bill, but when you study the bill you find out otherwise. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued the following statement on the state of health care reform (click here) in which he says:

The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected.

However, the bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to learn that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill passed on Christmas Eve. Notwithstanding the denials and explanations of its supporters, and unlike the bill approved by the House of Representatives in November, the Senate bill deliberately excludes the language of the Hyde amendment. It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born.